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20,000 meals in 20 days

how do you do 20,000 meals in 20 days? simple its called summer school. at the end of the school year i got recruited to cook for summer school at the high school level. summer school operates a little differently than the rest of the year as in all meals, i repeat all meals, are free to everyone, even anyone 18 years or younger who walks in off the street. we do breakfast and we do lunch.

today we calculated the numbers and we are averaging a 1,000 meals a day. currently on a staff of 4 ladies. when i found that out i was so thankful. i have been so exhausted from work which isn’t like me. yesterday i even fell asleep on the floor of my living room for 45 minutes. i thought i was getting sick or something but no just making a 1,000 meals in a day. if the janitors weren’t helping run the dishwasher i don’t know when we’d get out of the kitchen. we had 5 ladies till our range cook slipped a disk in her back. i normally function as a line cook, aka the pizza queen, plus making sure all things have been prepped and packaged for the rest of the lines. deli, grill, salad, etc. now i’m range cook, cooking all things hot and line cook, making 60 pizzas a day.

i have gotten pizza making down to a fine art. you ready for this…..i can put together 5 pizzas in 5 minutes. no joke i timed myself the other day. granted the night before i lay out all the dough on baking sheets. but in 5 minutes i lay out 5 presheeted pizza dough on my table, ladle a 1/2 cup of sauce and spread onto each dough, then each pizza gets 8 oz of cheese and a combination of 3 oz of meat and or 2 oz of vegetables. today they got a selection of deluxe (sausage, pepperoni, olives, and peppers) pepperoni, sausage, cheese, and some happy Hawaiian (ham and pineapple). i’ve caught myself daydreaming about other types of pizza i can construct…….margarita pizza so simple, just need to get fresh basil into the kitchen, or a taco pizza with leftover taco meet from nacho tuesday, cheddar cheese, black olives and jalapenos. then i’ll think that isn’t sanctioned by the state or federal government and then i say screw that i’m going to do that any way you know why these kids need some good food!